“What are you doing here?” he said. “Were you on the way to inspect me?”
“No. I went to Crump’s, but he didn’t answer. I guess he was out in the back yard.”
“Why would you go to Crump’s?”
“Why not? Crump and I are on very good terms these days.”
“Oh, come off, Hester. Crump is not on good terms with anyone.”
“That’s what you think.”
“What did you want to see him about?”
“If you must know, I wanted to try to hook something out of his kitchen. When he didn’t answer the door, I simply took the opportunity to walk in and help myself.”
“What did you hook?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Where is it? In your bag?”
“Yes, it is,” she said, “and it’s becoming quite heavy. Junior, if you had any manners, you’d offer to carry it for me.”
“Give it to me,” he said.
He took her bag, and pretty soon she took his arm. It made him feel as if they were conspirators, which they were, or lovers, which, unfortunately, they weren’t.
16
It had been ever so much easier than she had thought it would be. Indeed, the ease with which things had developed had quite restored her old self-confidence in such matters, and it just showed you that there really wasn’t much difference between what you could do successfully at forty-two and what you had done at twenty, except that you were naturally compelled to do it with older men. Not that it had gone as far now as it sometimes had then, but it was clearly not a question of intent or objective. It was merely a question of time. One simply slowed up a bit as one grew older.
The time, Flo thought, might be at hand. And she wondered, if it was, what she should do. Hester had assured her that it would be unnecessary to reduce old Brewster to his underwear, but nothing had been said, conversely, about being reduced by old Brewster to hers. He was, to be sure, a lively old shyster. It made her wonder what he had secretly been up to all these years. Because he did not drink or smoke or swear, she had assumed that he wasn’t interested in other forms of entertainment either, and this had been a mistake at best, and might turn out to be a tactical blunder.
It had all started, after she was goaded into it by Hester, with an invitation to lunch, instigated by Flo. In the beginning, Brewster had been the same cranky old devil as always, as sour and suspicious as an owl at noon, but he relented a little with the corned beef and cabbage, and by the time they had come to coffee, he was as loquacious and oily as if his cup were filled with gin. It was positively astonishing, the change in him. Or, if not the change, the revelation of his secret self. The man was, she saw, an absolute menace. Anyhow, she was into it, and had to go on, and after the luncheon there were other dates for this and that, and finally there had been, just day before yesterday, a trial assignation in his quarters, a sort of dry run to see how things might go with live ammunition. Or had it been? Brewster had made the supreme concession of serving her martinis while he had grape juice, and this had the effect of making her drunk while he remained sober, which was, as anyone could see, a risky situation. She did not wonder until later if he had arranged it on purpose, the sly old rake, and the big question was what had happened along toward the end when everything had gone foggy and couldn’t be remembered exactly afterward. Well, whatever it had been, it was all for the children, as well as for herself, and there was even, when you stopped to think, a kind of nobility in it. At any rate, Hester certainly couldn’t accuse her again of being a slacker.
Especially, she thought, after tonight Tonight there was a little dinner in Brewster’s quarters, and anyone with half a brain knows that little dinners in such circumstances frequently last until breakfast. She had thought twice about coming, but far too much had been gained to be lost now by an excess of propriety, and it wasn’t so much propriety, anyhow, as a reasonable fear that Brewster, abed, left his teeth on the dresser. Oh, well, it was too late now. She had just left the cab at the curb, and now she was in the elevator, which was stopping at the proper floor, and down the hall, just around the corner, was Brewster’s door.
At the door, she rang, but no one came, which was exasperating. Under the circumstances you would think that old Brewster would be eager, and consequently prompt. Perhaps, though, he was off somewhere in the apartment with a door closed, and did not hear the bell. She had suspected several times that he was somewhat deaf, and once, in a movie, had practically had to shout a diplomatic intimacy that she had meant to whisper. After ringing again without response, she turned the knob and opened the door, expecting to see soft lights and drawn drapes and other licentious arrangements. Instead, she saw nothing. The room was dark.
Reaching around the door jamb, she found a switch and turned on the ceiling lights. And now she was really exasperated, for it was instantly apparent that Brewster had made no arrangements at all, licentious or otherwise. It looked, in fact, like Flo would even have to do without her dinner. But her exasperation was not unqualified. Her feelings were, to be exact, ambivalent. She didn’t know whether to feel reprieved or offended.
Where could Brewster be? Obviously, wherever he was, it was elsewhere. Could he have forgotten about their date for dinner? Well, hardly. Flo was not ready by at least a decade to admit any such radical diminishment of her powers. Could he have been unavoidably detained somewhere by important legal business or something? This was possible, but surely, in that case, he would have phoned. Could he, being a deceptive and ornery old curmudgeon, have deliberately stood her up after craftily leading her on? Pride answered no. So did eros. Hers in the first instances, his in the second. He was not likely to abandon a program in which she was prepared, at some sacrifice, to perform in a style he had not known since when, if ever.
Should she, she asked herself, wait? She decided that she shouldn’t, and old Brewster could damn well whistle for his dinner, and for anything else he wanted and wasn’t going to get. One sacrifice was more than enough, even though it hadn’t actually got beyond a good intention. Before she left, though, she had better make a quick tour of the apartment, just to be sure that he wasn’t around somewhere after all. It would be just like him to have gone off for a nap, anticipating an exhausting evening, and to have slept right on without waking. Men as old as Brewster, while capable of periodic vitality, were notoriously short-winded in the long run.
With this in mind, she began her tour in the bedroom, walking there directly from the door, but Brewster wasn’t on the bed, or under it, or anywhere else in the room. Just to be methodical, she looked next in the bathroom, hoping earnestly that Brewster wasn’t lurking in there nude, which would have been, all in all, a more horrific and astonishing sight than it was to find him lying on the floor behind the sofa, which is where he was and where she found him when she returned to the living room.
It was a very queer place to take a nap, she thought.
She prodded him in a thigh with her toe, and decided that he was not napping, but dead.
It was unfortunate and somewhat sad, she thought, that he had died just when she was making life a little more interesting for him.
She bent closer, seeing the back of his head, and decided that he had not died at all, at least not without assistance, but had been killed.
She was naturally somewhat confused by this unexpected development, and she didn’t quite know what to do. Should she call a doctor? Or the police? Or both? Or neither? The first seemed unnecessary, and the second inadvisable. What seemed advisable, now that Brewster’s whereabouts had been established, was to put herself somewhere else as quickly as possible, and that’s what she did, or started to do, turning off the lights on her way out.